The Architect
by mleeph
Summary: Haruka sees that his grandson's destiny lies with a doomed boy. A wish is granted. A price is paid. A tale is set in motion. [precanon, DouWata]


**This is my own little pet theory to explain why Doumeki's grandfather is so interested in talking to Watanuki, and what exactly his role is in the story. Also, I took the liberty of giving him some psychic powers and a very slight if-you-squint relationship with Yuuko...**

**Anyway. Enjoy.**

* * *

_The boy who leans lazily against the window is slender and unassuming. His wide blue eyes regard the road with solemn curiosity, listening to the hum of the car and the murmur of his parents' voices from the front seat. It's been a long day, after all. There was school and chocolate cake to bake, stories to tell and games to play, and then this late shopping outing for which he had really been too tired. But it doesn't matter, he supposes, reaching behind his glasses with an index finger to rub a bit of dust from his eye. They're almost home, and the groceries are bumping around in back, familiar noise. The boy curls against the seat, already dreaming of a warm comforter to pull around his chin--_

_And then he is dead, with the slamming of brakes and no time to panic before the twisted car door lodges itself through his head, his heart, his life._

_That's when Doumeki Haruka wakes suddenly from his dream._

-----

Dragonflies mark the coming of spring to the shop, though they are nowhere to be seen in the rest of the city. Here in her oasis of madness the sorceress harbors the little creatures. They flit through the oppressive air by the hundreds, wings whirring like tiny fans. The dragonflies are messengers of the coming summer, and of the coming storms. 

"Strange things happen when two destinies conflict, don't they, Haruka-san?" Yuuko murmurs almost amusedly, her back to the white-haired figure in her doorway. He is both older and younger than she, more idealistic even at his advanced age. He regards her carefully; she can feel the trail of his eyes down her back. "Or perhaps," she muses, swinging to face him in all her exaggerated regalia, "It's only that the better of his futures is at stake?"

"You know why I'm here," he tells her. Yuuko nods and motions for him to sit down at the table in the corner. Her face is grave, no longer joking.

"You are here because you would like to see your grandson live with some semblance of happiness when you are gone," she sighs, recounting what she has seen. "You want him to love, you want him to care, you want him to show his imperfections to someone other than himself. You are here to give him indirectly what you cannot give directly. You would like," she adds, looking him in the eye, "to see Shizuka survive past the age of twenty nine."

"Yes."

"It would be his own choice to go, you know," the witch tells him quietly. "The gun would be legal and in his hands."

"It's not a choice I want him to make."

"You are here to change his future for him?"

"I'm here to bargain for a wish he can't make himself."

Yuuko shrugs. "So be it." She reaches across the ornate tablecloth for her cup of tea, taking a long sip in thoughtful preparation. Setting it down: "The boy, then. The one who can make a difference. You saw him die last night, didn't you?" Her guest nods.

"Yes. I had been trying to read the future all evening, with very little luck. I realize now I was searching for something that did not exist. I had been trying to find out what would go wrong, when what I needed to know was what would fail to go right. But the dream made it clear enough." Haruka sighs, troubled. He has not touched the steaming cup before him. "What is the boy's name? And when will he die?"

"Watanuki Kimihiro, and very soon."

"What will it take to save him?"

"Nothing you can pay, I'm afraid."

"Then..." the old man remains ramrod-straight; the only sign of his despair is the curl of his calloused fingers into the tablecloth before him. He stares at the pattern with rigid intensity, a look that Yuuko suspects his grandchild will mimic one day. She takes pity only after a few long moments.

"You can give him a loan," she says abruptly, and Haruka raises his eyes in hope. "How many years do you have left?"

"A decade, give or take. Of course it can't be seen exactly, but..."

"It will be enough."

Yuuko stands, then, and sweeps across the room to a calendar hanging on the far wall. The picture on the open page is of a lacy insect perched on a leaf, and the caption reads "April: impermanence." The witch looks amused. "Appropriate, isn't it?"

"Of your own making?" Haruka asks, nodding toward the image.

"No, I bought it at the craft shop down on the corner. They were on sale, if you like the style!" Yuuko flashes him an dazzling grin when he looks at her incredulously. "Anyway, today is the sixth, and this," she trails her finger down a line and over a few squares, "is when your dream should come true. The tenth, nine days after his birthday. If you're to give him another chance, it will be on that day."

"Four days to get my affairs in order, then."

The sorceress looks at him, the willingly condemned, with matter-of-fact detachedness. "Long enough to say goodbye."

Haruka pauses, nods, and starts to get up. "It will hurt Shizuka. But it's better in the long run, for him and the boy," he says, and gives a quiet, hollow laugh. "My grandson... he needs this Watanuki more than he needs me. It's a strange thing to imagine."

Outside the garden is buzzing with life. There are butterflies here too, occasionally, but they flutter and prance away from visitors who walk near their delicate wings. The calendar finds its way into Haruka's hands with a gentle reminder from Yuuko:

"You know I cannot wish you good luck."

"No, but I can wish you goodbye," he replies, and catches her wrist as she moves to take it away. She lets it be caught, and says nothing.

"We will see each other again," Haruka tells her. But she's already gone, lost in the trailing threads of Hitsuzen, her eyes unreadable. He lets go and walks from her gate for the last time. It's good enough for him. But he stops at the gate, and turns with a question on his lips. "When the loaned time runs out, what then?" And Yuuko smiles, the satisfied puppeteer, the unsolvable puzzle.

"That will depend on how much of his grandfather's strength Shizuka inherits. He may change hitsuzen yet."

And when her client is safely out of the gate and long gone down the street, the sorceress shrugs back into her reverie and turns to go inside.

"Perhaps all of us will."

-----

_On the tenth of April the boy with glasses does not die. He sits alone in a hospital chair and says nothing to anybody, his world still shattered from the blow. But he is alive, at least, and able to love, and care, and perhaps to weave a crack in the cold mask of another person. And not so very far away another black-haired boy mirrors his bent form and tears, a heavy price for their twin destinies._

_And on the wall of the Doumeki family shrine hangs a calendar, forever open to the month of April, which no one has had the heart to take down. It is unmarked except in two places. One is the on the first day, where someone has scratched out the tiny number in the left hand corner, and written instead the full date in kanji. Most people read it in the normal way:_ shigatsu tsuitachi_, the first of the month of April. Only one of the family, as he ages, learns to read the way it was intended._

_And the other place is below the picture, below the enigmatic theme of "April: impermanence," where the same flowing hand has left a final plea:_

_"... but it doesn't have to be."_


End file.
